


everybody talks to cats

by thirteenohtwo



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22070848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirteenohtwo/pseuds/thirteenohtwo
Summary: I'm a sucker for sacrifice and Caleb needs out of his own head after a bad day.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 18
Kudos: 279





	everybody talks to cats

A lot of things happen in a very short amount of time. Six seconds, to be precise, if you're counting - and Caleb is always counting. 

He listens for the ridiculously, just stupidly fast footfalls of his empire sibling and doesn't have to look up before he's closing the final line to the teleportation circle. He has the utmost faith that she's managed to grab what they were after - or deemed it too dangerous and just ran, and that, too, he has faith in. If Beau decides something is too dangerous, if something isn't worth the risk - it isn't worth the risk.

The lines of the chalk all light up, sometimes he wonders if the others can feel the  _ pulse _ of magic as dust and small pebbles rise a few inches within the circle. Six seconds to freedom. He looks up.

Fjord catches the sack their monk  _ heaves _ at him, stumbling back half a step. He's bigger now, slightly, tougher at least. Meatier. It doesn't stop him or slow him down - Fjord leans back on one foot with the momentum of the heft but steps forward with the other. A flickering image you'd miss if you blinked, and he's gone. 

Yasha rips the arrow from her shoulder, the crimson smear a stark contrast against her pale skin. Her grip on the hilt of her sword tightens, the muscle tensing all the way up her mighty arm, and Caleb knows she wants to stay behind. She prefers -  _ needs _ to be the last one through, to make sure all the others get through. But she was already stepping on the circle when he finished it, and she's swept off to safety without a choice.

Caleb turns his gaze to Nott, always to Nott. Much like Yasha, he  _ needs _ to know she's safe, especially her. For a menagerie of reasons, but mostly,  _ mostly _ because he knows she won't make sure she's safe herself. Refuses, he knows, but doesn't think to, he lies to the others. His tragic little Halfling is wild - frenzied, her yellow eyes are big and flick to everyone left, everything left, while a small green hand holds the cut on her side that’s just a little too deep. “Ca-”

Whatever her words may be, they’re lost to magic, to a flicker and then nothing. He’ll have to catch them on the other side, and he pushes up to his feet, holding out his arms as Caduceus sends himself and Nott tumbling into the circle. Their firbolg is by no means graceful, but he is usually more fluid than that. His actions, much like his words, are taken with care. He was falling, Caleb suspects.

His suspicions are confirmed when Jester has to bend down to pick up her fellow cleric’s staff, a grimace twisting her usual practiced carefree face into something that makes Caleb’s insides feel like molten anger. Arcane dust glitters in the air between them, an entire circle, and - she’s  _ too far _ . She’s too far from him, with most of the party miles, upon miles away from them now. “Jester,” he manages to get out.

_ Three seconds left. _

She offers him a reassuring smile, stepping towards the circle with a bump of a shrug to her shoulders, and when they drop again, Caleb sees them. Sees the others, the darkly clad ‘guards’ that were giving chase. Three of them pull their bows, draw them back in that same moment.

_ Two seconds.  _

Two seconds to take Jester down, with neither cleric able to offer  _ anyone _ healing magic. Caleb’s heart seizes in his chest, he reaches out for her and feels the draw of the magic pulling him in, in, in. He can hear the whistle of the arrows over the blood rushing in his ears, can  _ feel _ his heart stop-

Twofold, as Beau steps in front. A quick twist, having heard them, too, or seen them, or just  _ known. _ She turns to step between Jester and the arrows, her hands jerking up. With a flash, Jester is gone. Caleb waits for Beau to turn, to duck into the circle.

_ One second. _

She falls. He watches her fall as his heart drops again. Two fists clutch arrows just before they can embed themselves into her chest, but the third,  _ the third, the third, the third _ , is impaled  _ dangerously _ close to her heart. Just close. Only close. It has to be close, it  _ can’t _ be-

She lands with a thud, a puff of the dust glittering in his circle just as he steps in to try and catch her. And they’re both gone.

-

-

-

_ “Beauregard!” _ he gasps? Exclaims? Yells? Shouts?  _ Screams? _ All of it, none of it, he’s not even sure any sound came out. The only thing he  _ knows _ the only thing his mind is  _ comprehending _ , is Beau on the floor of Yussa’s tower, still clutching the arrows, her eyes wide but unseeing. 

Jester drops to her knees on Beau’s other side, blue hands move from the end of the arrow sticking out of her, to her cheeks. “Beau? Beau! Oh gods, oh no, Beau, what did - how did,  _ Caduceus!” _

Those blue eyes finally blink and then blink again, and again, and again. The monk’s whole body twitches, the arrows in her fists snap and she sucks in a sharp,  _ wet _ breath. “Fucking assholes!” she wheezes.

Caduceus kneels, stretches out his large hand but pulls it back slightly. “I don’t… I can’t… we shouldn’t touch it unless someone can heal it immediately."

"No, no, no. I can fix this, I can fix this," Jester mumbles softly, too softly for anyone but Caleb to hear mostly because he's watching her lips, looking for any sign of arcane. But there is none. He knows, he - gods, he  _ counted _ , he knows how many spells they all used and that there is nothing,  _ nothing _ left. Nothing but her god, and in moments like these, moments that  _ matter,  _ moments that  _ scare him _ … he's not sure the Traveller is anything but a lonely girl's only friend.

Light pours into the room where Yasha all but rips the door from its hinges as she and Fjord duck out. Presumably to look for their wizard friend, but Caleb also knows he won't have spells to fix this. But-! Maybe-?

Blue fingers wipe at the blood from the corners of Beau's mouth as Jester cradles her head, stares down into her friend's face with a watery and overly cheerful smile. "I'm going to fix this, Beau. I promise! You're going to be okay!"

He's at the door when he hears the gurgle, when he doesn't have to turn to know that Beau is trying her best to comfort and reassure Jester just as much as the tiefling is for her. 

His chest feels brittle, fragile, like if he takes too large a breath, it might just shatter him but he runs. Down the stairs to the next floor, to the office or workshop, he can't remember - too busy to realize he can't remember, and shoves in behind Fjord. 

"What are-!"

Yasha has Wensforth in her hands, pinned up against the wall as her chest heaves with hard breaths.  _ "Call him back!" _

"Yussa is in the Happy Fun Ball again," Fjord explains quickly. His voice is clipped and he's searching desks and drawers, probably for the same thing Caleb was going to. "But we can't call him back-"

"Because I've used up all the charges to the mirror already, I'm  _ so,  _ so sorry!" their little friend shrieks. "If I had known, I swear - I'm so - I don't know any magic to help her!"

Soot covered hands press against the skin of Yasha's arm, he feels how warm she is - hot and trembling, but she relaxes infinitely at his touch. "It's not his fault." He waits for her to set the goblin down and storm over to Fjord. "Healing potions, where does he keep them?"

The wince is all the answer he needs and this time he doesn't stop Yasha from ripping one of the desks apart to search within. The tearing of the wood drowns out the voice but Caleb reads Wensforth's lips anyway. "He took the few he has with him into the ball!"

Wrong. This is wrong, it's all wrong. They picked  _ here _ for a reason! They were safe! They were coming back, coming home (in a sense to some, more these days), coming back to family and down time. 

_ The monks would have had clerics and healing potions. The monks could have saved her. _

Caleb falls against the doorframe - just a second, on his way out. Blood is beginning to pool in his shoes, one of them, but he can't feel the wound anymore, not over the sharp pain with each beat of his heart.

He's going to lose her.

He  _ can't  _ lose her. 

There isn't - he can't make it back to her, not all the way. He collapses to his knees just inside the door at the sight he sees. Jester has Beau's head in her lap, she gently rubs the colour back into the monk's cheeks as she murmurs comforting words. But the tiefling's chest jerks with hiccups, tears drip from her cheeks to Beau's shoulders. Nott presses a brown hand against her cheek, holds it there, hugs Beau's arm to her chest as she stares with watery eyes. Caduceus has her other hand, rubs the pads of his fingers up and down her arm. 

It's only the flutter of Beau's eyelashes that has him shuffling closer on his knees. His fingers curl around the ankle of her boot, his gaze catching the rapid, uneven rise and fall of her chest, lines up her torso and where the arrow is. “Clipped her lung, at least,” he mumbles to no one, to himself. “This is wrong. This isn’t how it was supposed to go.”

Fjord and Yasha skid into the room but it’s Jester’s head that whips up. “Momma!” she gasps. Her eyes meet his, only for a second -  _ so much can happen in just one second _ , and he sees something break, just a little. “Momma has healing potions! We need to get her to the Chateau!”

Nobody moves until Jester is hooking her arms under Beau’s armpits and the monk’s eyes fall open.  _ “Jes,” _ the word dribbles from her lips with blood, drips down her chin, and then everyone is moving. 

-

-

-

Nobody says they aren’t going to make it. 

He’s not sure if the others feel that way or not, if the same fears linger in their own heads, bouncing around like a sharp shard of glass that sticks where it shouldn’t. Maybe they’re better at ignoring it than he is, but it’s always there. He hears it with each fall of his foot against the gravel roads, with each crash of waves against the shoreline. 

_ We’re not going to make it. _

Beau doesn’t even respond to Jester anymore - cradled between their two strongest members; Jester with her arms hooked around each of Beau’s knees and her tail looped around the monk’s ankle (anxiously, he suspects, she won’t leave any distance between them, reaching for Beau, always reaching), while Yasha jogs backwards as she holds Beau’s torso in her hands. He knows the trail of blood they leave behind isn’t just grom his - bro? is that what she calls him? but also from the line of crossbow bolts running up the side of Yasha’s thigh and hip. 

Ahead of them, Fjord and Caduceus push people aside, they clear a path on the short but never ending rush to the Chateau. Nott scurries nearby, ducking up into the window of every building they pass, eyes peeled for potions, any potions. He lingers only enough to make sure she’s keeping up, but she’s quick, and they’re almost there.

_ We’re not going to make it.  _

-

-

-

They get to the front fence when Nott comes racing back out the front door followed  _ very _ closely by a  _ very _ fancily dressed Marion Lavorre. Gold chains and trinkets jingle from her horns and neck, her ivory silk dress is dirtied, at least, as she drops to her knees moments after Jester and Yasha set Beau down. Extravagant and intricate rings clink against the glass of the large potion she carries in each hand, and…

And everyone else fades to children around her. Big eyes, deep frowns, and so very quiet, so very still as they watch and wait, helpless. 

_ Helpless children. _

Her hair falls in crimson rings around Beau’s face. She sets one of the potions down to pull Beau’s shoulders up onto her lap, her hand pressing against a cool cheek lacking the usual empirical warmth. “Beau? Darling, open your eyes if you can,” she requests softly. Calmly. 

Composed. Is this where Jester learned to craft her masks?

There’s no response but it doesn’t shake her, doesn’t faze her - not that Caleb can see. She continues as if Beau has brought her a skinned knee; a gentle, reassuring smile, kind golden eyes. She pops the lid off the potion in her hand, wrapping her fingers around the bloodstained wood of the arrow. “This is going to hurt for a few seconds, honey. Brace yourself.”

There is no bracing - Caleb flinches, they all flinch when she quickly but firmly pulls the arrow from their friend. It falls to the grass beside them and then she’s pressing her hand against the spot - Caleb’s eyes trace the line of muscle against ruby red skin, another potential source for an aspect of Jester (did she get  _ anything _ from the Traveller, from the gods, or was it all from her mother?). 

Beau is motionless, her eyes don’t open, she doesn’t scream or grunt or bite back any noise of discomfort like she usually does. She doesn’t  _ react _ and Caleb can feel his breakfast coming back up, the coast fades as darkness creeps in around the edges of his vision. He can’t - he can’t-

Marion maneuvers the lip of the bottle between Beau’s own and tips it up - Jester drops, again, the gravel crunches beneath her knees but she pays it no mind. Her hands reach up to Beau’s face as red potion spills from her lips, helping her mother. “Beau,” she chokes out and smiles big and wide. “Don’t be stubborn, just drink it!”

It’s hard to miss, just a flicker of movement, but Caleb sees Nott disappear again. 

“Beau!” it’s not soft this time, not watery or shaky. Jester  _ snarls _ her name as the rest of the potion is wasted, spilling into the grass, down Beau’s chest and shoulders. “You do  _ not _ get to leave me! You said you follow me! Beau, you said! I’m not dying so neither can you! Come back, please. Please, Beau, don’t leave me. I can’t follow you there.”

In one smooth, graceful motion, Marion trades out the empty bottle for the full one. Jester helps her this time, she rubs her thumbs against the hinges of Beau’s jaw before opening her mouth and tilting her head back just a little more. “Here we go,” Marion eases with her words, her voice - gentle but strong, firm. 

Commanding, he could imagine, the voice of reason getting everyone to do what they need to. 

“Please, Beau,” Jester whispers as her mother starts pouring. The sob tears violently from her chest when the potion comes spilling up and out the sides of Beau’s mouth until there’s half a bottle left. 

Her tail winds up Beau’s arm and Marion lifts her hand from Beau’s chest to instead massage her neck, her throat, in long, fluid movements. “Come on, Beauregard,” she urges. “You need to work with me, here now.”

“Just drink it, Beau!” Fjord snaps at her and it’s only Cad’s hand on his shoulder that stops him from staggering forward. “Just drink the damn thing!”

“Please,” Yasha begs softly, her voice barely that of a whisper on the sea wind.

Jester’s hands clench into fists, one raises with a jerk of motion before she  _ beats _ it against Beau’s chest. “Damn you, Beau,  _ drink _ it!”

The monk’s chest hiccups and expands - more of the potion is coughed up as Beau’s lungs drag in air and liquid, choking on the very thing saving her life. Her eyes shoot open, oh so blue, and  _ wild _ . Her fist shoots up, is caught in a blue hand and held tightly to Jester’s chest, as her feet kick at the dirt and grass. Marion’s tail, curled up her other arm, stops Beau from swinging at Caleb, stops her fist mere inches from his nose, as her back arches up from the ground.

Always fighting, this one. Always violent, just under the restraint she holds on the surface. 

They all listen to her rasp in another breath,  _ “urgghh!” _ and watch her squeeze her eyes shut, face twisting up into a pained grimace. She coughs again, its choked out, and more blood than potion spills from between her teeth this time. 

Marion drops the empty bottle in the grass and leans up, let's Beau's shoulders fall to the ground so she can instead press her palms against the wound that's bleeding more profusely now, to lean on it. "She needs-"

One mother is cut off as another darts between the Nein. Nott straddles Beau's stomach, ripping the cork from three different vials of healing potion to shove them into the monk's mouth and force her to chug them. "That's a girl," she coos - it's not soft or smooth, not very reassuring on the surface, nothing like Marion.

Nott's voice is shrill like a bird being strangled, and jagged enough to  _ feel _ the way broken glass sounds. 

But Caleb can see a little green hand pat Beau's cheek soothingly, can see Beau's wild eyes stay locked on Nott's as her whole body tenses with pain. "Not so bad, is it, drama queen?" Nott asks her while she switches out the empty vial for another one. "Always bragging about catching arrows, hmm?" 

He let's out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, when Beau sags against the grass. They all do - he can feel the release of muscles, can see Caduceus slump again and lean heavily on his staff. 

"They're you go," Marion sighs after lifting her hands, pulling the vest aside to inspect Beau's wound. Another pale scar to join the many, many others - still angry and red, still warm and tender, painful, probably. But not life threatening, anymore. "You're okay. Everything is okay."

Fjord drops his head, a tired smile tugging his lips up. He winces and raises a hand to touch the gash up his chin, lip, and cheek, and Caleb blinks.

Oh, right. They are beat to shit.

-

-

-

His bath is… nice but too short - he gets clean, he’s  _ usually  _ clean, despite Jester’s jokes, but he doesn’t want to linger and hog a tub someone else needs. His body aches, is still healing, and he hauls it off to the boys’ room to drop down onto a bed. Moving is too much effort, much too much effort. 

With a trembling hand, he snaps his fingers and feels the weight of Frumpkin on his bed. Fjord snickers from where he’s kicking off his boots. “Go stretch your legs,” he says in a muffled voice, Frumpkin jumping down off the bed in the same moment. “I am going to sleep, I think.”

“Hate to waste the day, but that might be a good idea,” Fjord agrees. He gets up to his feet and pulls his shirt off, stretching green muscles until they pop. “I’m gonna check on Beau and see if there’s a free tub. Want me to bring food back?”

“Food bad. Sleep good.”

He chuckles and leans down to pat the back of Caleb’s thigh before the wizard hears their door close and the fading steps of his orc friend. 

The thing about sleeping is that even if his body wants it, his mind refuses. It whirls and spins and clicks and races, he recounts the day’s events and tears open that… that wound of seeing Beau fall. His body sinks against the soft mattress but his head is still in the battle, it’s still going over what could have gone better, where everything went wrong, or just didn’t go right. 

He should have started drawing the circle sooner.

Caleb’s fingers twitch until they grab the sides of his pants and pull, tug. The jitters work up through his hands and arms, seeping into his chest and dancing along his spine. His whole body groans in pain as he forces himself up to turn over onto his side.

It doesn’t take a moment before he grants his body mercy; beneath his lids, his eyes glow blue, and he’s no longer in his own body.

-

-

-

The Lavish Chateau is  _ much _ bigger as a cat. He has no destination in mind, no goals he needs to accomplish - that’s kind of the whole point of this, no thinking, just looking, just watching Frumpkin do what wants. Just enough cognition to keep his mind busy from lapsing back to things he doesn’t want to think about. 

And so they wander down the hall, Frumpkin poking his head into each open door.

The first is Nott, Luc, and Yeza’s. The little halfing paces back and forth in the room, little green fingers flipping a large brass button around and around. She goes to the window, sometimes, to gaze down in the yard behind the building where Luc and Nugget play, and Yeza watches on peacefully. Mostly, though, she keeps to herself, sticks to the shadow, and is simply alone. 

Frumpkin rubs up against her side as she crouches down beneath the window again, unseen by her loving family. Her perfect family. Her perfectly halfling family that, no matter how hard she tries, she cannot fit into. Not like this. Her sharp nails run through orange fur absently, scratch under his chin until he purrs, and she finally blinks down at him. "Well, at least I know you're you. Caleb wouldn't let me scratch his chin like this, he's very weird about people touching him. Not that you'd know - he wears you like a scarf."

The cat rubs against her side again, until she's sitting down and reaching up to pet his head. 

"She almost died today and it's all I can see when I look at them. It's all I can think about," Nott says in her unusually serious voice. Open and vulnerable and part of Caleb feels bad, like he's breaching her privacy, but it would take more effort than he has to pull himself from Frumpkin's mind. He lingers, only faintly, down in the roots of their bond. He listens and sees, but he does not retain. He won't retain, not this, he swears. "I think about how that could have been me. Almost was me. How close I always come to never returning back to them. If I died out there, and they just… would they trust I was dead? Or would they think I was just hiding again? Would they mourn or would they wonder? Always wonder if I abandoned them. If I chose you guys over them.

"Of course, as soon as I can make myself forget that thought, the other springs up," she continues and her fingers in his fur get sharper, her petting gets harder. "If I  _ was _ here. If I had  _ been _ here, with my family, maybe down at the beach? She would have  _ died," _ the word is a harsh whisper that's full of everything is wasn't down there in the moment. Fear and fury and  _ desperation.  _ "One of  _ mine _ would have died, if I wasn't there. If I chose them, over you."

Nott pushes back up to her feet again. She walks across the room to drag a chair back while Frumpkin stretches and heads for the door. Against the windowsill, she leans a cheek on her fist, and watches down below.

"Sometimes I think I might live my whole life and then some, stuck. Always stuck, inbetween. Not halfling or goblin, not here with you or down there with them. One foot in and one foot out, even my watery grave." 

-

-

-

He follows Yasha into her room, little paw swatting at the gauze that dangles from her arms. He jumps up onto the little side table when she sets it all down, and stares into her mismatched eyes, watching them soften. 

A pale finger reaches out to scratch beneath his chin, for the second time today. It is a good day for Frumpkin. "Hello, little fella," she greets softly, even in her own room. Even alone, she is quiet and gentle, and idly, Caleb wonders. 

Wonders how someone so… how someone can be such a contradiction, woven so seamlessly together, that they don't come apart. How Yasha is tall and large and strong, but somehow still soft and small. How the hands that carve through people and obstacles with little effort, that summon the power of a storm god, how they choose instead to pick flowers and press them in books. Compassion and rage, all bottled together in a woman with black and grey hair, purple and blue eyes. 

They crinkle around a wince and Frumpkin looks down as she pulls one of six bolts from her thigh, working her way up to her hip. Each one drops with a quiet clang in the metal dish she has with her, water rinsing the blood from them (of course she would give them to Nott). Her hands, strong and scarred, don't tremble or shake or hesitate. They dip a cloth into another bowl of water before pressing against the first wound to clean it, her face only ever thoughtful as she goes.

Caleb supposes, somewhere in the depths of Frumpkin's mind, that he's not entirely sure what Yasha feels. What she  _ can _ feel, after everything she's been through, and he suspects he's probably the best guess of them all. 

(A small voice wonders if he would know better, having lost Beau. If it's dissimilar to her losing Molly.)

Frumpkin leaps down from the table to land soundlessly on the floor. Yasha doesn't look up, she pulls another bolt from her leg and tells him, "thanks for checking in," and it clicks, for Caleb.

He notices then, as they leave Yasha alone in the room. A pattern he felt like he was missing all this time, an underlying current, the thing that drew them all together and made it  _ work. _

They were all alone. In some regard or another, for varying lengths, though all substantial. 

Some were literally alone; a barbarian wandering the wastes of Xhorhas with half a memory and a devil shadowing her. A cleric left to his family cemetery for… gods only know how long, watching it die around him. A boy, broken, burned, and dumped into a sanitarium to rot into the man he is today. An orc with no past, set out to sea with no anchors, walking away from a shipwreck with oily tentacles wrapped like a noose around him. 

And some alone, even surrounded by people; a halfling who couldn't fit in even before she drowned and was brought back as her own nightmare. A princess locked up in the most loving of towers, only ever able to watch from afar and play pretend with the world. Or the girl who was never enough for her family and who was taught she could never be enough for anyone else. 

And now - now they all cling to each other, cling to the family they never had, had to leave, were abandoned by, or burned away. 

-

-

-

"Please change out of those clothes, my little sapphire, they're covered in blood."

Frumpkin pauses midstep on his way to the stairs and instead curls towards the door open only a crack, pushing in without a sound. It's the nicest room so far but that makes sense, as it's the Ruby's herself; lots of warm red, gold, and cream colours with antique furniture, and extravagant pieces all around. 

Marion sits on one of the lounging couches as she watches Jester flit from the open balcony to the door Frumpkin just entered, to the middle of the room as she wrings her hands. "I should be there with her right now or I should- I should be sleeping! I should sleep so I can get back all my spells!"

"You  _ should _ be resting," her mother agrees softly and pats the cushion beside her. "Whether that is sleeping, bathing, or just relaxing is up to you. Beauregard is okay, I've asked Anya to stay by her side until you or Caduceus can finish healing her."

This seems to placate Jester - sort of. Her face twists up, there's a flash of  _ something _ , like she heard something unpleasant, but it's gone and she's sinking against her mother in the next second. The ivory dress has either been written off completely or Marion simply doesn't care that her daughter is staining it with the monk's blood. "I should have stayed, I should have waited, momma. I could have blocked that last arrow with my shield but I didn't hear them, I didn't even know they caught up to us!"

Crimson fingers drag themselves through blue hair, ever soft and gentle, working out the tangles. Jester sinks further against her mother, her eyes fluttering closed as exhaustion slowly creeps ever nearer. "The last arrow?"

"Beau came through the portal holding two more," is the tired grunt of a reply. "She's  _ super _ fast, momma, she can catch arrows and throw them back like she shot them herself."

An interested hum comes from the Ruby, thoughtful golden eyes resting on her child. "Those are remarkable reflexes," she praises. "It was just the two of you left?"

"And Caleb, I think. He might have to go last so the circle doesn't close but I dunno for sure."

She finishes working on the tangle in her fingers before squeezing Jester's shoulder in a hug. "I am very thankful you found her, that you have built a family of support and protection out there."

"Yeah," Jester yawns out as her eyes droop. "They're pretty great. I should… I should go check on Beau…"

A smile curls Marion's lips as she listens to the sleep try and carry her daughter's words away. "I'm sure she would rather you rest, darling. She'll be there in the morning."

"But we  _ always _ sleep together…"

"Rest now, my sapphire. You'll be with her soon." Marion listens for Jester's breathing to even out, watches for the anxious flick of her tail to fade until she's certain her daughter is sleeping. Her gaze, eventually, wanders over Frumpkin, no startlement or surprise, just an ever calming sweep. "I'm not sure who got lucky today," she says softly, as to not wake Jester. "My daughter or your wizard. I know you and I don't have much say but I am here and you are out there with them, so I would appreciate your help in steering them towards the least dangerous path."

Frumpkin scoots his front paws out to stretch, leaning forward as his back legs reach out behind him, toes stretching too. Marion's smile softens from serenity to something more genuine as she settles in with her daughter snoozing soundly against her. 

-

-

-

Caduceus almost steps on them.

The door to Beau's room opens as the giant shuffles out backward, murmuring some farewell to the half elf woman inside. Frumpkin has to skitter to the side, his tail curling against a freshly bathed, furry shin, and then big pink eyes are staring down at them. "Oh, sorry there, Frumpkin. I'm all out of sorts."

His left eye is still slightly swollen, his arm hanging more on that side than his other, and both Caleb and Frumpkin remember that Caduceus took most of the blast from the last trap he set off. Thank the gods Yasha had tackled him to the side or… 

Well, nobody wants to think about that, not after a day like this.

"I'm sure you two are eager to check on Miss Beau. She's healing well, Miss Anya is taking good care of her, but… uh, reassurance is nice." He pushes the door open again, offering Anya a lazy smile when she looks up curiously.

Frumpkin pads along the floor before hopping up to the foot of the bed. Anya startles, raising very slightly before she relaxes in her seat again. They both scrutinize her long enough to assess any threats, and move on when they find none.

Beau is… well, she's out when Frumpkin looks at her, which isn't surprising in the least. The healing potions helped, they saved her life, but they're only slightly better than a bandaid for something like this. Frumpkin's tail flicks and Caleb resigns himself to waiting for one of the clerics to sleep. She will just… she'll have to hang on and heal the old fashioned way until then. 

Frumpkin trots up the bed, slow and careful as he steps onto Beau's thigh. Besides the obvious wound, and how bruised and bloody her knuckles are, there isn't actually much wear and tear. Nothing else to be careful of, and so Frumpkin curls up on the monk's stomach. They both listen to the heart beating strong in her chest, feel the rise and fall of her breathing, and the warmth of life running through her skin. 

Caleb's mind settles - his nerves relax as Frumpkin's eyes close. They're both soothed, in this moment, both reassured that Beau  _ will _ be okay. That Frumpkin's second favourite human will live, and Caleb's sister will be there for him tomorrow.

-

-

-

It's hours later, in the dead of the night, while Caleb sleeps heavily down the hall, that Frumpkin wakes. One eye cracks open to track the figure moving in the room, before falling shut again.

Jester lifts the sheet to curl into Beau's side, pulling the monk's arm over her side as she curls her own just above Frumpkin. Her tail winds down Beau's thigh, and she tucks her face into Beau's neck before settling in.

The monk's voice is rough and drenched in sleep, a half conscious and bleary thought. "Night, Jes…"

  
  



End file.
